CHAPTER V THE LAW OF FOUR-CENTURY PERIODS.
The Law of Four-Century Periods CHAPTER V (AN APPLICATION OF THE PRECEDING CHAPTER) How many analogies does the Theory of Temperaments permit us to weave! It draws threads not only from all points of space and from all manifestations of mind, but likewise from time and history. Having remarked, for example, that the order of evolution of the Four Temperaments, by their analogy with the Seasons, the Ages of Life, etc., presents regularly the Bilious or Obstinate followed by the happy Sanguine, this by the Nervous and it in turn by the Lymphatic, to recommence with the Bilious, and so on, which is equivalent to saying in face of every activity: Growth, Completeness, Decline and Repose, is it not plain that the 17th, 13th, 9th, 5th and 1st centuries of our era (those of Louis XIV, of Saint Louis, of Charlemagne, of Clovis and of Augustus, which our histories call the "Grands Siecles"), like the 4th, 8th, 12th and 16th of the pre-Christian era (those of Alexander, of Romulus, of Agamemnon, of Sesostris), return every 400 years, like a full moon, or a historic Summer? Besides the nine great Figures just named, they bring, like bolts of thunder, the most tremendous downfalls and destructions with which the world has resounded : the fall of Jericho, the fall of Troy, the fall of Nineveh, that of the Persian Empire, that of Jerusalem, that of Rome, that of the Carlovingian Empire, that of the Hohenstaufens, that of the Catholic Empire. And at the same time are precipitated the most irresistible invasions and streams of migration: the Jews into the Promised Land, the Heraclides across Greece, the black Ethiopians into Egypt, the blonde Gauls to Rome, the brown Romans to the limit of their conquests, the great Invasions, in return, to the very heart of that Empire; those of the Northmen across its reconstitution, of the Mongols into Europe in the 13th century, and the expansion of France over Europe and the world (17th century). And finally, in one of these Summers of History there rises the figure of Christ. The dark centuries of Winter (10th, 6th, 2nd B.C.; 3rd, 7th, llth, 15th and 19th A.D.) offer, by contrast, grave and often sorrowful and bitter, figures : the Buddha (whether of the 10th or the 6th century), then Confucius (with Zoroaster, it is said, and Pythagoras) ; the aged Cato ; four hundred years later the great heresiarch Mani, whose despairing philosophy dared equalize God and the Devil; in the 7th century the fatalist Mahomet, in the llth Ghibellinism, happily overcome by Gregory VII at Canossa; John Huss, and finally Hegel and Schopenhauer. Ages of transition and of grievous yet fecund error! Napoleon (whose prefiguration seems to have been the Gaulish Sigovese, conquering the German tribes 24 centuries earlier), Mahomet II, William the Conqueror and the founder of the Sassanids; Ardashir and Marius and Cyrus the adventurer and Erechtheus form the tokens of it, behind these heroes of the advance-guard: the Revolutionaries, Jeanne d'Arc, the Cid and the Guelphs; the Gracchi, Harmodius and Aristogition, the first Brutus. Livingstone followed by Stanley and Christopher Columbus followed by the Conquistadores correspond to the first Crusaders and to the Arab Conquest, as Verlaine to Villon. It is as if the travail of germination pierces, for the ages to come, the cold black earth of the Louis-Philippes and the Louis XI's, the Rothschilds and the Jacques Coeurs, the Croesuses and the Eclectics. This is also a series of Germanizing centuries; every one of them wears, as an armor, the Germanic grandeur, from the formidable organization of the Prankish and Sueve Leagues (3rd century) and the preponderance of the Mayors of Austrasia (7th), to the Franconian House (llth) and that of the Habsbourgs (15th) and the triumphant rise of the Hohenzollerns (19th). Each one of them, as a night or winter, extinguished and swept away the century immediately preceding, this latter belonging to the series of Autumn or Evening. In the Autumn or Sunset periods to which we now come, we find always elegance enraptured with itself, a varied and fragile splendor, luxury and profusion; always the vintage-time of a declining civilization. Even the kings are so learned that they pose as sages! Joseph II and Catherine of Russia, and thou, Charles V, father of the mortal schism of the West, wherein perished our supremacy in Europe; and you, the Basileus philosopher^ of 10th century Byzantium; even thou, Chilperic, the grammarian of the 6th century, succeeding Marcus Aurelius and the Antonines (2nd century), who follow 400 years after the Ptolemies of Alexandria; and thou, Solon (7th century B.C.) and finally, at the summit, thou, Solomon, author or not of the Book of Wisdom! With the sneering scepticism which Voltaire, across four times four centuries, received as a heritage from Lucian, reigns also the most absurd credulity; Cagliostro, Rosenkranz and the Freemasons of the 14th century, occultism of the time of Gerbert, the frenzied Gnostics, and that disquieting pythoness of Endor whose words resounded in the troubled mind of Saul, the foolish king, prefiguration, four centuries in advance, of Nebuchadnezzar, and by 24 centuries of our Charles VI ! grins, convulsions, the appearance of the animal grimace beneath the human mask. And with this series of centuries is connected the birth of idolatry which tradition makes contemporaneous with Ninus. Thought would perish, if the learned, everywhere modestly limited to the tangible, did not extract some elements of survival; Thales and the sages, Archimedes and Euclid, Ptolemy the geographer, the lawyers of Justinian, the Arabian scholars and the inventors of the 14th century have done so. In contrast, let us unroll the series of Spring. If Jesus chose one of the Summer-cycles for His glory ; if Idolatry rose in the decline of the Autumn cycles; if some yet mysterious menace darkens those of Winter, it was one of the cycles of Spring that saw the creation of this beautiful world, according to the Bible; in the 41st century before Christ (the date most frequently adopted, notably by Bossuet, Daunou, Dreyss, etc.). Four times 400 years nearer to us, in the 25th century, Creation was reborn, purified by that fantastic baptism, the Deluge. The Flood of Deucalion is still 400 years nearer (21st century) ; it corresponds to the epoch of the Jewish people's origin in Abraham. But hark while rises, from the slopes of Sinai, the divine poetry of Moses! (17th century B.C.), and, following like an echo below from the sea, that of Orpheus (13th century). Who are the greatest of creators, if not Homer (9th century), the Tragics of the 5th century, Virgil (1st century B.C.); in sacred literature, the sublime Fathers of the 4th century (St. John Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose, Basil, Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, founder, it is said, of the Christian theatre), and in non-Christian literature, the Eddas (8th century) ; then the French and German epics of the 12th century, and, finally, Shakespeare. Our 20th century belongs to this glorious family. Let us not forget that each of the giants whom I have just evoked marches amid the luxuriant flowering of all the arts; the Renaissance dawns over almost all Europe, despite Protestant anathema, as, 800 years earlier, reviving Byzantine art triumphed over the Iconoclasts; the ogival architecture of the 12th century (Notre Dame de Paris) rivals that of the Parthenon after four times 400 years ; but who could enumerate the poets and artists of these privileged ages? Even war is ennobled, and seems made for dreams and visions : the expedition of the Argonauts, the Medic Wars, the glory of Greece, the struggles for equality in Rome, the conflicts with the Arian belittlers of the great Mystery, the combat with the Saxons, and that of Roland at Roncesvalles, preluding, four centuries in advance, the Crusades of the 12th century against Islam; lastly the religious wars in resistance to the sectarianism of that new Arius, Luther. But special disciplines have each time responded to new heresies : Loyola, St. Bernard, St. Benoit, St. Augustine and the Nicene Creed, the Incarnation, Socrates, the just Herakles, the Decalogue (17th century B.C.,) appear at intervals of four centuries and confirm the ancient call of Abraham (21st century) and the splendid forecast of the Bow of Promise (25th century). Do we not see, even in the midst of our surprised indifference, religious passion reviving, and decorative art everywhere throwing over the ugliness of the past century its network of beauty? solemn portents, and perhaps the last. Four times four make sixteen; the first 16 centuries, which comprised the world's youth, expired with the sobs of Buddha, that personification of disillusion; the intoxicating fruits of maturity ripened, on the thrice sacred shores of the Mediterranean, between Homer and Mahomet. Is it old age, is it decline, which began under the pale skies of the north, with the Eddas and the ancestors of the Carlovingians, to terminate with the 23rd century? may it be that humanity has but four more centuries to live? Strangely, already the commentators of the Apocalypse profess to discover therein that the Last Judgment will follow not long after the year 2000, and from elsewhere the prophecies of St. Malachy announce but ten more Popes to lead the Church to the fulfillment of her task.